Multi pocket, accordion type envelopes are well known in the art, as illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 1,585,237 to Doughty and by Hoffmann U.S. Pat. No. 2,756,515. Both the above described patents provide identifying indicia for contents stored in the several pockets of the envelope. The indicia are provided as printed identification at an upper portion of each of the pocket separators. The portion bearing the identifying indicia may be raised, as shown in the Doughty disclosure.
Access to the contents of an individual pocket may be difficult, requiring manipulation and separation of adjacent pocket separators, however, since all separators have a common height. As shown in U.S. Pat. No. 314,598 to Meek, an accordion-type envelope for holding blanks may be provided with graduated heights for the several pockets thereof. However, where such a structure is utilized for storage of files of identical physical dimensions, materials stored in pockets having a greater depth are placed more deeply in the pocket, thus resulting in an increased likelihood of non-access to a desired file.
Similar problems arise in the multi pocketed envelope described in Caprile et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,132, wherein pocket separators for successive pockets are shown to have successively increasing height, thus providing successively increasing pocket depth.
In a multi-pocketed filing receptacle described in Greenhaus U.S. Pat. No. 1,564,557 there are shown a number of pocket separators of substantially equal height, vertically displaced from one another, to form a plurality of pockets. The pockets have a common bottom portion, however, each separator permitting the pocket contents to fall into the common bottom portion.
McCleneghan U.S. Pat. No. 3,266,712 teaches a mailing envelope structure having two pockets. One of the compartments has a selectively variable size, in which variation is achieved by selective application of adhesive. Similarly, in a banking envelope described in Tulisalo U.S. Pat. No. 3,642,195 there are provided a side opening currency pocket and a flap closed end opening coin pocket, the bottom of the coin pocket being spaced above the lower end of the envelope.
Several multi-compartmental envelopes are known in the art to have affixed indicia for identifying particular uses thereof. For illustrative purposes reference is made to the Falcon U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,083 wherein a receipt folder is provided primarily for receipts of significance to tax records. The folder includes a number of slits in a book-like structure, the slits opening to a plurality of pockets into which the receipts may be placed. Each of the pockets is identified by indicia defining the contents thereof. Casas et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,839,809 describes a similar book-style arrangement of a plurality of envelopes for maintaining personal records. Each of the envelopes is identified by indicia descriptive of the time period for the records stored therein, and a summarizing label is provided for the entire folder summarizing the entire contents thereof.
None of the prior art discloses a pocketed envelope for storage of substantially identically sized documents in a plurality of pockets which are vertically displaced from one another in order to provide ease of access to the documents and which, at the same time, will provide the documents at the same grasping distance from the top of the pockets. Thus, where a plurality of pockets are provided in the prior art, either the pockets are of substantially the same height at no vertical displacement, thus increasing the difficulty of accessing a particular pocket or, alternatively, the pockets are vertically displaced to enable ease of access to a particular pocket, but the contents of such vertically displaced pockets are themselves at substantially a common elevation thus increasing the difficulty of accessing the documents within the pockets.
Additionally, there is not available in the prior art a particular tax record keeping system which enables an easily stored set of documents to be easily retrieved from a plurality of vertically displaced pockets in an accordion-type of multi-pocketed envelope.